It’s here! We can’t believe it’s finally here! We can struggle so much with letting go of summer. Goodbye, sunny days by the pool! So long, watermelon seed spitting contests! Farewell, family trips to Zoombezi Bay! Fall is officially here, folks, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
BUT! For so many of us, the sting of saying goodbye to summer is softened by the beginning of our OTHER favorite season: pumpkin spice season!
We understand that, for those of you with braces, it’s not as easy as collecting and gobbling up all the pumpkin spice goodness you can find. You need to make sure you’re making smart choices for your teeth.
We are here to help! We have scoured the internet, and we’ve found this fantastic, cinnamony, nutmegy, gingery (yes, these are now words. Feel free to use them liberally.), bronze orange pumpkin cream cheese muffins that will make you forget all about your post-summer misery.
This recipe is GREAT because it’s so versatile! You can make muffins (or mini muffins! just bake them for a little less timed) for yourself, and a loaf for everyone else! That’s right—we allotted 12 muffins for you, and one loaf for the rest of your crew. Hey, you’re baking them. You can eat as many of them as you want!
Check out the recipe below!
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread and Muffins
Ingredients
Pumpkin Bread:
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1/2 C. vegetable oil
1/2 C. applesauce
2/3 C. milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 C. sugar
3 1/2 C. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. ginger
1 1/2 C. mini chocolate chips.
Cream Cheese Filling:
16 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 C. sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 Tbsp. milk
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease loaf pans, muffins pans or come of each (I made 1 large loaf and 12 muffins!)
2. In a large bowl, combine pumpkin, eggs, vegetable oil, applesauce, milk, vanilla extract and sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger together.
4. Combine the 1st and 2nd bowl and stir only until combined.
5. Stir in chocolate chips.
6. Filling: Beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and milk together until smooth.
7. For Loaf Pans: Pour a little bit of batter into the loaf pan, spread to cover the bottom and then spoon cream cheese filling and spread it on top. Continue to alternate until your pan is 3/4 full and then bake for 60-80 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.
8. For muffins: Fill each muffin tin 1/3 full, then spoon your filling in the pan, then top with another spoonful of pumpkin batter. Bake for 14-18 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.
NOTE: I sprinkled extra chocolate chips on top of my bread before baking to make it look extra pretty
Find the original recipe at:
And happy baking!